Waste Tyre Life Cycyle Carbon Footprint Calculation

The rapid development of tyre industry brings great environmental problems while providing convenience for people and creating great economic benefits.It is urgent to carry out the study of the carbon footprint of a whole life cycle of the waste tyre,and quantitatively analyze the emission of green house gases GHG in the process of the tyre from cradle to grave.It can not only enhance the awareness of energy conservation and emission reduction for enterprises and consumers,but also play an important role in the implementation of energy conservation and emission reduction of China's tyre industry,promotion of international competitiveness and comprehensive entry into the carbon trading market.At first,based on the life cycle theory and referring to the PAS 2050 specification,this paper establishes a model of a tyre full life cycle carbon footprint calculation.The model is divided into five sections:determination of purpose,flow chart scheme,definition of accounting boundary,data collection,and carbon footprint calculation.The model provides a feasible method and theoretical basis for the calculation of tyre carbon footprint.Secondly,in order to make the research posing the basic data and provide reference for the follow-up research,three typical enterprises in a whole life cycle of tyre are investigated by site survey.The surveyed companies include:an iron and steel joint production enterprise,a tyre production enterprise and a reclaimed rubber production enterprise.Based on energy consumption data,GHG emissions of the investigated enterprises are calculated and analyzed.The results show as follows:GHG emission for producing per kilogram of steel wire is about2.4600 kg CO₂e;GHG emission for producing per kilogram of tyres is about 1.4125 kg CO₂e;and GHG emission for producing per kilogram of reclaimed rubber is about 0.5562 kg CO₂e,respectively.Thirdly,based on the carbon footprint calculation model of a whole life cycle of tyre,and combined with the survey data,calculation and analysis of GHG emissions between the PCR tyre of model 195/65 R15 and the TBR tyre of model 275/80 R22.5 are carried out.Calculation results show that the carbon footprint for a full life cycle of one PCR tyre is about404.4801 kg CO₂e;the carbon footprint for a full life cycle of one TBR tyre is about2196.4025 kg CO₂e.The GHG emissions of PCR and TBR tyres are mainly attributed to the tyre application stage,with emissions of 369.2410 kg CO₂e and 2016.4248 kg CO₂e.The material reuse stage can reduce GHG emissions,and emission reduction effects are about6.6312 kg CO₂e and 53.0168 kg CO₂e,respectively.Finally,in order to facilitate calculations and visualization of the carbon footprint of a tyre life cycle,a set of software for calculating the carbon footprint of a tyre life cycle is developed by using computer C#programming language.The functional features,module division,interface setting and program operation of the software are introduced in detail.And taken the tyre production stage calculation module as a case,the software programming process is explained.This software is used to calculate a full life cycle carbon footprint of TBR tyres and the calculation result verifies the program being accurate and feasible.